To accompany feature: Gender: When the body and brain disagreeSCIENCEBefore Reading:1. Research the definitions for a) biological sex; and b) gender identity. Are the two terms interchangeable? Why or why not?2. How important is it to feel comfortable in one’s own identity?During Reading:1. What changed in Zoë MacGregor’s life beginning around age 9?2. Provide some examples of...

First of two partsIn November 2014, Zoë MacGregor celebrated her 13th birthday. Like any teen might, she invited a friend to her house for a sleepover. They ordered pizza, had brownies and ice cream for dessert, then watched a movie.The Seattle-native’s journey to becoming a teen had been very different from that of many of her friends, however. Until she was 9, the girl had lived as Ian — a boy....

Boys and girls are different. It seems so obvious. Yet some medical conditions may cause some of those differences to become confused. And then telling apart boys from girls can prove challenging.It’s one measure of how complex human biology is.When it comes to whether someone looks like a boy or girl, hormones clearly run the show. For instance, a newborn girl’s genitals may appear somewhat or...

People tend to describe materials that can bend and be easily transformed as plastic. Most of those materials are made from polymers, often created from fossil fuels. But even behaviors can bend and morph. In that sense, these too can be considered plastic.Paul Vasey works at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. As a comparative psychologist, he studies behaviors in animals. And he’s...

Many parents think their kids become hyperactive after eating candy or other sweets. But sugar may actually cause drowsiness, not hyperactivity. That’s the conclusion of a new study in mice.“We all experience this strong feeling of sleepiness after a very large meal,” says Christophe Varin. As a neuroscientist at Lyon Neuroscience Research Center and ESPCI ParisTech in France, he studies the...

After many hours in the kitchen, my project is done. I baked more than 500 cookies in the name of science. Over several months, I gathered more than 100 people to eat them. I ran statistics and later made posters to display my results. But the real test of my success would only come from one very special judge. That’s Natalie, the woman who inspired my experiments. And she’s just sent word that...

One of the worst kinds of pain might be chronic type caused by damaged nerves. It can last a long time. And there aren’t many treatments for it. But there is one treatment that helps in mice. And scientists now think they finally may understand how it works.For the treatment, scientists extract cells from the bone marrow of mice. These cells are then injected into the spinal cord of a mouse with...

By Carolyn Carson, Alumni Coordinator for Society for Science & the PublicBefore I became SSP’s Alumni Coordinator, I studied history at Georgetown University. Even now, there’s still something about old, dusty files full of correspondence or ephemera that makes me feel all warm and tingly.Which is why I was so thrilled to receive this scrapbook in the mail.Compiled by Dr. Robert E. Palombi (...

Interested in science? Now you can channel it directly to your ears with a podcast called the Tumble Podcast, a smart series of science stories to pique your curiosity. The scientists you meet here will teach you plenty as they tell you about the research they love.A podcast is a digital audio or video series. You can download them from the Internet to your computer or smartphone, or listen to it...

You’ve probably listened to music or sports on the radio. Teenage and tween-age researchers from around the world did more than just listen to the radio, this past May. They built one!All were middle-school delegates to the 2015 Broadcom MASTERS International program. To be chosen, each had earlier exhibited an outstanding research project in science, technology, engineering or mathematics....